Every month when I share the statistics for The Historical Fiction Reading challenge I go around and look at the books that everyone has been reading. In my post I inevitably say I have added several books to my TBR, and today I bring you evidence of that! Two of these books are ones that I learned about through the challenge.
The Mad Women's Ball by Victoria Mas
Set in 1885 in Paris, The Mad Women's Ball is a short but engrossing read that I thoroughly enjoyed.
The Mad Women's Ball tells the story of the women of the Salpêtrière Asylum. It wasn't a place that you wanted to find yourself as for most of the year it is a very grim place where the women that no one wants in society are hidden behind the locked doors and high walls. Whilst there were some genuinely mentally disturbed people in the asylum, there are also some women who are there because they dared to defy their families, fell in love with someone inappropriate or behaved in some other non-typical way.
Eugenie comes from a well to do family, and she should be living a protected, sheltered life but she mistakenly trusts her grandmother with her secret - she can see ghosts. It is the last straw for her father and she is taken to the asylum to be locked up with a diagnosis of hysteria.
Keeping firm control of the asylum is the Matron, Genevieve. Whilst she is stern, she also does her best to care for the women, especially those who are used as living subjects of Jean-Martin Charcot, a French doctor who is credited with doing ground breaking work about hypnosis and hysteria, although I am not sure he would get away with doing the same living experiments these days
The only time that Eugenie will be seen again is on the occasion of The Mad Women's Ball, an annual event where the patients get the chance to get all dressed up and the brightest lights of Paris come to the ball to watch them dance.
I heard about this book over at Carpe Librum when Tracey reviewed it here. It's a fascinating read.
Victoria Mas is a French author and the translator was Frank Wynne. This books counts for the Books in Translation challenge hosted at Introverted Reader.
Rating 4.5/5
The Florence Sisters by Tessa Harris
The idea of packing up and living in Italy for a while has long been attractive. In Florence in 1940 there are a group of British women who live in the city. They are known as the Scorpioni although they prefer to think of themselves of the English Ladies Art Appreciation Society. However, this is a time when the British are at war with Italy and so they find themselves targeted by the authorities.
Angelina is one of the ladies' half English-half Italian nieces, who also happens to be an expert in art, with a particular fascination for the work of Lucas Cranach. When she first meets art dealer, Edoardo Bernini she doesn't like him. She knows that he can't be trusted. After all, his father was convicted of an art related con and Edoardo is working for the fascists.
When he asks her to verify the authenticity of a recently found Cranach painting she knows that if she says that it is genuine it will disappear over the border to Germany, but if she falsely declares it to be a fake she will put the herself and all of the ladies in danger.
This was my first Tessa Harris and it was an interesting read. I did go down a bit of a rabbit hole regarding the damage done to Venice during WWII and also in looking at the work of Cranach who was an artist that I was unfamiliar with!
I am sharing this review with the New Release Challenge hosted at The Chocolate Lady's Book Reviews.
Rating 4/5
Glorious Exploits by Ferdia Lennon
This is almost a wildcard entry in my reading because it is well and truly outside my normal choices. This book is set in Syracuse in Sicily in the year 412 BC in the days following an unsuccessful Athenian invasion. The Athenians who survived the battle are being held in a disused quarry outside town. The conditions are harsh, the food is scarce and there is no compassion from the locals. After all, these are the men who killed their husbands, brothers and sons.
Our two main characters, Gelon and Lampo, are unemployed potters, who come across as being a bit dodgy, particularly Lampo who sees himself as a wheeler dealer but money just flows through his fingers like sand. They come up with a scheme to use the prisoners to put on a for one night only production of the latest play by Euripides. The scale of the production gets larger and larger involving more and more of the locals. But the big question is, will the crowd come?
This was such a fun read. Ferdia Lennon is an Irish author who has achieved quite a lot of success with this book, including being shortlisted for the Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction in 2025. One of the fun aspects is the language. Lennon chooses to give his main characters Irish voices, using words that are so overtly anachronistic that it doesn't matter. It probably shouldn't work, but it does!
There are, however, serious subjects covered in the book including the impact of war, of love, of redemption and so much more.
I first heard about this book when Cathy from What Cathy Reader Next reviewed it. I was very surprised to find it at my local library, but I am so glad that I got to read it!
Rating 4/5
I am sharing all of these reviews with the Historical Fiction Reading Challenge which I host.
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